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He also claims the firm’s portfolio was never as big as Peirce suggests.  “At the height of the market, we were managing just over $200 million,”  Cajee said. And only $5 million is unaccounted for.  After the interview, the brothers disappeared again.

Crypto bros bought golden passports

In the meantime, a mysterious Dubai-based crypto company, Pennython made compensation payouts to many of the out-of-pocket traders. These payouts were said to be approximately 70%.

The Peirce report indicates that the brothers had a plan. It is alleged that a week before the “hack” the 3 Africrypt employees were terminated and kicked off the platform.

Raees and Ameer bought citizenship from the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu. In 2020 the brothers bought these “golden passports''. This was months before the hack.

In 2020 more than 2,000 people bought Vanuatu passports. The passports usually cost over $100,000 each. And give the brothers visa-free access to several countries, including the UK and European nations within the Schengen Area.

In the meantime, the brothers were living a lavish lifestyle. After the hack, millions were spent. They bought designer watches, silk suits, first-class tickets, and lavish holidays.

They bought a Lamborghini Huracan, one of the most expensive cars in the world.  And paid a year's rent in advance on a luxurious Zimbali Estate, north of Durban, South Africa.

They sold the Lamborghini before they left the country. And weeks later they were booking first-class Emirates trips to Dubai and the Maldives costing over $40,000 each and not including the costs of accommodations.

It may be more than a coincidence that the company Pennython who was smoothing things over with some of the investor losses was Dubai-based.

Where did the Crypto go?

The investigation found that in November 2020, there were a string of strange transfers from their Bitcoin wallets using "dark web" technologies. 

It is alleged that the crypto bros smuggled the funds out by pooling investor cash with other Bitcoin transactions to make it untraceable.

Peirce and a cyber security specialist probed the Cajee brothers' email addresses and company websites. And found no evidence of a hack.

"No hack took place whatsoever," Peirce insists.

He added: "Through various addresses supplied to him, he was able to resolve a Bitcoin wallet belonging to Africrypt that had a transaction history of 75,459 Bitcoin (BTC) to the current value of $2.9billion USD.

"The Bitcoin address had various micro-transactions going out to multiple wallets."